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Kate's avatar

While we are overly prone to the sinful idolizing of family life in our current culture it remains unbiblical to say that there is no priority/ "better treatment" to be given to marriage and immediate family relationships. Deut 24:5; 2 tim 3:4-5, 12, 5:4,8, 10, 14; Titus 2:4-5 remind of such priorities.

The men in Vaughn's congregation perhaps had the experience of their care of their spouse taking up much of their available time and emotional energy - in effect, their care for their wives may well have led to them stepping away from other acts of service.

Perhaps a false dichotomy could also lie in considering that correct priotisation of a spouse/ family necessitates loving others "less". It is simply that the call to love our immediate family (see above plus your list too) is quite distinct from our call to love our neighbours as ourselves (=how we'd like to be treated).

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Somewhere in cyberspace's avatar

You lost me with: "In a contemporary world (and church) which encourages very binary and retrenched thinking".

While the church encourages binary thinking - which is a function of God's design as evident in Genesis: night and day, dry land and sea, heavens and earth, man and woman, sin and obedience - the world hardly encourages binary thinking.

In the world there is de Bono's lateral thinking, the alphabet people's 92 genders, and an Australian Prime Minister who is trying to swing a referendum on the "vibe of the thing". None of those examples indicates use of binary thinking.

And then, while I get retrenched thinking in the church (a function of its Scripture and Articles and Liturgies and Doctrine and Creeds - and a good thing at that!), if you have retrenched thinking in the world it is perhaps an unfortunate outcome of being fissured into an echo chamber of your own making.

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